Private Selves and Public Conflicts: Mastery and Gender Identity in Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South

Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South (1855) advances a radical social-moral agenda as it examines Victorian anxieties about public expressions of power and gender identity. The novel presents several competing articulations of the pragmatic industrialist, the intellectual gentleman, and the working class man. The "true man? (164) in Industrial England, a term Gaskell employs to describe the factory owner, Thornton, comes under particular scrutiny, as does the now famous Victorian feminine ideal of the 'angel in the house.' The pragmatic industrialist identity is challenged by Margaret Hale, the novel's heroine. Margaret appropriates a stereotypically masculine role to advocate for a better life for the factory men working for Thornton, who also serves as her love interest in the novel. At odds with the strong industrialist man "made of iron" ( 213) represented by Thornton is the 'man of letters' represented by the heroine's father, Mr. Hale, whose values and forms of work are regarded as weak, effeminate, and outdated by Thornton. While these gendered divisions of work existed before the mid nineteenth century, they came under pressure during the Industrial Revolution, as working-class men were increasingly ready to go on strike for better conditions and pay. This paper considers these gendered identities and competing forms of work and particularly examines Margaret's inner conflict, for she desires both to improve the condition of the factory workers in Milton-Northern and protect Mr. Thornton from mob violence and financial ruin.